SAP Group Reporting put to the test

Valid financial reports are essential in corporate groups in order to make sound decisions quickly and ensure planning reliability. This is because they provide information about the company's current situation and also indicate how companies can act quickly in a challenging economic environment and make changes if necessary.

Until the end of 2023, Linde Engineering was still using the CoRE system based on SAP SEM-BCS for monthly consolidation and reporting, although at the time it was primarily developed for the Linde Gas division. CoRE was only able to meet the specific requirements of the Engineering Division to a limited extent: "It was particularly important to us to improve transparency across the segments and the management structure of Linde Engineering in order to be able to record this part of the overall Group financially with maximum efficiency and flexibility," explains Tomasz Brzoza, SAP Financial Consolidation Manager at Linde Engineering.

As Linde Engineering had already introduced the ERP solution SAP S/4 Hana, it was an obvious step to convert the reporting processes to the integrated consolidation tool Group Reporting in order to significantly streamline the processes. Brzoza and his team drew up a detailed list of requirements and then looked for a suitable partner for the implementation project who could realize the desired requirements. Linde Engineering finally found this partner in Caleo, a consultancy based in southern Germany that specializes in Group reporting, financial planning and reporting with SAP solutions.

SAP Group Reporting problem-free?

"We were in contact with four companies, Caleo presented itself best as a team and in terms of expertise," says Tobias Krapp, Head of Finance Global Systems & Processes at Linde Engineering, explaining the decision.

The project began in September 2022 with design meetings as part of a blueprinting process to visualize the upcoming processes and identify the interfaces between the two business areas. "As we had already created a catalog of requirements, the corresponding preliminary phase with Caleo was no longer necessary and we were able to start implementation straight away," says Krapp. Although this went according to plan for the entire duration of the project, it was not without its challenges: "Group Reporting has only been on the market for a short time, so technical complications are sometimes unavoidable, especially when introducing it in a large corporation," explains Martin Müller, Manager at Caleo.

Although SAP provides an interface via which the required data is to be transferred to the Group Reporting module, in the case of Linde Engineering, the software experts at Caleo had to fall back on a different scenario on the recommendation of SAP. The functionalities of the Preparation Ledger scenario were replicated to a certain extent and reorganized manually. "Fortunately, we at Caleo specialize in solving such challenges satisfactorily - with the necessary creativity if necessary," says Fabian Zollikofer, Managing Partner at Caleo.

Comparison with SAP SEM-BCS

The SAP experts at Caleo demonstrated this not only in technical terms, but also in conceptual terms, as the Group Reporting system had to be implemented in a different way to the previous SEM-BCS system. "It was necessary to move away from the implementations of the predecessor system, as Group Reporting does not provide an analogous implementation for all BCS functionalities," explains Zollikofer. After numerous tests, Group Reporting finally ran parallel to the CoRE system for four months, and Linde Engineering reported financial data with CoRE for the last time at the end of 2023. Group Reporting alone has been in use since the beginning of 2024 and also provides the financial data to the Hyperion system used by Linde headquarters.

Group Reporting: New functions

After the implementation project, which was also time-consuming for the finance teams, they were rewarded with significantly simpler reporting: the controllers have new reporting functions at their disposal and the entire data collection process is automated. This reduces the manual workload for the specialist department, leaving more time for analysis and enabling well-founded decisions to be made. The transparency of reporting has also increased, as the data can be traced back to its source. The data is also available in real time. "The feedback from our specialist users is consistently positive: Group Reporting works better in terms of content and is more user-friendly to use," says Krapp.

And Jochen Straub, Executive Director Finance & Controlling at Linde Engineering, adds: "The implementation of S/4 Hana for Group Reporting was a great team effort and a success that will bring immediate benefits through harmonized and simplified monthly reporting processes and form the basis for further value creation in the near future." As a result of the successful project, Brzoza and Krapp are already planning the introduction of further analysis and automation functions based on S/4 Hana. Some of these projects have already been initiated. For example, the new application has been expanded to include the option of analyzing currency effects. "We definitely want to continue using Caleo's expertise in the future," says Krapp.

Accounting directly integrated

The example of Linde Engineering illustrates the role of efficiently prepared financial reports in corporate groups, particularly with regard to rapid decision-making and planning reliability. Thanks to the creative solution approaches of the external consulting firm Caleo, the functionalities required by the company from the current Group Reporting release could be replicated manually. The implementation of the consolidation tool S/4 for Group Reporting now enables the company to optimize its reporting processes and minimize the manual effort for specialist departments. The specific advantages of the system, namely the temporal and functional proximity to the accounting processes through direct integration, fulfill all the requirements that Linde Engineering placed on a new consolidation solution. The data entry process has been simplified and accelerated, and the transparency of the data has been increased. The positive feedback from the specialist users underlines the importance of these improvements for the customer's controlling.

linde-engineering.com

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